A fossilized forest discovered in Arctic Norway is shedding light on one of the earliest forests to have evolved on this planet. Preserved in situ, these fossils reveal what life was like for these plants some 380 million years ago.

This was the Devonian Era, a time in which plants were starting to conquer the land. During this time period, the land mass that is now Norway was located on the equator. The tropical climate of this time likely fostered the growth of these early forests, causing a race for the sky. For their time, these forests were monstrous in proportion.

The fossils are comprised of a long extinct species of plant known scientifically as Protolepidodendropsis pulchra. These "trees" were not any sort of tree that we would readily recognize. To see their closest living relatives today, you will have to take a knee. These were forebearers of the club mosses (Lycopodiaceae).

These forests stood around 4 meters (13 feet) in height. Even more peculiar, they grew densely packed with only about 20 centimeters separating each trunk. The trunks themselves were stunning having been covered in diamond-shaped plates. Like the club mosses, they reproduced by spores.

Another interesting thing about such discoveries is that it allows us to infer quite a bit about what was going on in the atmosphere as well. With such densely packed forests spreading over the land, the Devonian world was, for the first time, seeing a massive drawdown of atmospheric CO2 levels. Plants were changing the globe as they rose to prominence. Along the way, they were irrevocably changing the course of life on Earth.